My most favorite vampire film

I always like to plug this film in more than any other in the vampire
genre. The atmosphere just draws me in with the shades of black and
white acting as the color scheme, allowing me to focus on the film and
not be distracted by random colors. The vampire's design is so
haunting, the silence of the piece helps with the vampire's mystique,
leaving only his movements to provide the chills.

A few negatives I have with this film is firstly, the music. My copy of
the film uses an organ to provide the sound. It is bit repetitive but
it does the job for me. Others I have watched have used totally
unfitting or just annoying scores. The characters get really no
development in my opinion, and I just don't care about them. It could
be a fault of the medium at the time or I'm just missing it.

Amazing for its time, pretty good for today

Nosferatu is a 1922 German film directed by F.W. Murnau, written by
Henrik Galeen, and starring Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, and
Greta Schröder.

Liked it, didn't love it. There are so many times during horror films
when I think of a smarter plan of action than the characters did, and
this movie was just the same. I totally understand that it is a
classic, and it definitely deserves to be. It's important to note the
time this movie came from while critiquing it. Things in the film that
may seem amateur now were ground-breaking back then. The film unfolded
in a somewhat confusing manner. Something I've noticed about watching
these earlier films is that the pacing is strange. It will be moving
incredibly slow and/or including scenes that weren't really necessary,
and then things that should take a long time happen in a snap with no
explanation. I know that's vague but when watching, be prepared for
seemingly random behavior stemming from somewhat ambiguous motives. I
thought I was having difficulty suspending disbelief, but you can only
blame it on that so many times before you have to accept that the film
just isn't filling in all the blanks. It was successful in creeping me
out, that's for sure. Interesting enough but I did find myself ready
for it to be over a while before it actually was. It has awesome
special effects for 1922. There were interesting, creative angles. It
is a classic for a reason, definitely, and I'll recommend it, I guess.

Bechdel test: 0/1 Did not pass. Only one female character and her sole
reason for existence was to worry about her husband and be in utter
despair.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. 1/1

Do I ever want to see it again? I would watch it again, yes.

Do I ever want to include it in my own collection? It's already
included but I don't think I would intend to buy it if it wasn't.

7/10 Bye love you -Jessie Carlson

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The first Dracula horror movie...

"Nosferatu" is a horror movie which was an unauthorized adaptation of
Bram Stoker's "Dracula" with some changes because of rights, so they
changed the names and from "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count
Dracula" became "Count Orlok". But the plot and also the storyline is
about the same as we know it nowadays.

I have to admit that even though this is an old movie I liked it
because it is considered one of the must see horror movies in order to
understand the history of horror. This movie maybe is considered as a
just old horror movie that can not give you anything but I have to
disagree with this opinion and for instance I have to say that this
movie can give you a lot. Some of them are that this movie was the idea
of vampires to be killed by sunlight and of course this movie was the
start of horror movies in that times.

Finally I believe that "Nosferatu" is a movie that everyone has to
watch because through this you can have a historic lesson about cinema
and of course horror. I have also to prepare you not to have any visual
expectations from this movie or plenty of action but instead of this it
has much of suspense. Also you have to take into consideration that
this movie is about one hundred years old, so do not judge it hardly
and also do not judge it before watching it.

Still Creepy After All These Years

Allow me to start off by saying that Nosferatu is a complete, shameless
rip-off of Dracula. Sure, the vampire's name has been changed, and the
story moved from London to Bremen, but the plot and many of the
characters remain the same. Bram Stoker's widow actually sued the
filmmakers for copyright infringement, securing a court order that all
copies of the film be destroyed. We are fortunate today that a handful
of prints survived. Sure, Nosferatu may be a rip-off, but it's still
one heck of a horror movie.

The movie does have some very real problems. Although the filmmakers
had one of the great novels of the previous century to work with, the
problems of adapting it into a screenplay, together with the
constraints inherent to all silent films medium, mean that some plot
points never become all the way clear. There is also a bit of Bad
Exposition Syndrome involving the film's solution. And although
Professor Van Helsing appears, he never actually confronts the villain.

But the issues are more than made up for by Nosferatu's sheer
creepiness. Conrad Viet (?) playing the title role, sports one of the
all time great horror movie makeup jobs. His pointed ears, completely
bald head, narrow cheekbones, and bushy eyebrows give him an aspect
that is terrible to behold. His hands are oversized, with his fingers
narrowing into long claws. And forget the standard pair of fangs; all
of his teeth are needle sharp, and his mouth is absolutely packed with
them.

This eeriness extends to practically every other aspect of the film as
well. The Transylvanian castle fills the viewer with foreboding from
the moment it is first seen, and the darkly lit halls and corridors
within are no less disquieting. Even more menacing is the ruined manor
in Bremen. Every window is broken, part of the roof is collapsed, and
indeed it seems that at any moment the entire structure could come
crashing down.

The special effects are also worth noting. Although crude by today's
standards, there is still something frightening about seeing doors open
and close on their own, or coffin lids floating through the air. We
know that these sights can't be real; the jerkiness of the movements
tells us that something is up. But the incompleteness of the illusion
only adds to the feeling that something is not right, heightening our
sense of apprehension.

Great advances in production values have taken place since this film
was made, and I admit that Todd Browning's Dracula, made only a decade
later, had much better plot and characterization. But Nosferatu is
still the one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen, able to
give even the hardiest of audiences nightmares. And if it can still
have this effect today, just imagine what it must have been like for
people watching this in 1921. It's not hard to picture many a burgher
making their way home through the dark, narrow streets of Berlin or
Munich, convinced that their every step was shadowed by an immortal
being that lived only to suck the very life out of them, and to You're
not reading this in the dark are you?

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"Here begins the land of phantoms..."

Highly influential silent horror classic. It follows the basic story of
Dracula. As pretty much everybody knows, they did this adaptation of
Stoker's novel without permission. His widow sued and won. The court
ordered that every print of this film be destroyed. Thankfully for us,
somebody saved a copy. That this film was made nearly a century ago is
astonishing. The makeup for the ratlike Count Orlock, played by Max
Schreck, is amazing even by modern standards. Orlock still stands to
this day as the most uniquely frightening vampire ever put on film.
Director F.W. Murnau creates an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere. He uses
many authentic "Old World" locations that are very spooky. There are
lots of creepy and scary moments in Nosferatu. As much as I love the
Universal and Hammer Draculas for their entertainment value, I think
this is the scariest of all the different versions I've seen. It's best
seen at night, as most great horror films are.

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One of the Greats

I have loved this film since I experienced it late night on TV some
time ago. I watched it on a B&W portable and was impressed by its
style, cinematography and invention. I have since viewed it on VHS and
DVD but had not truly been able appreciate the true vision of this
movie until I viewed it this week on the remastered three disc BD from
Masters of Cinema, as part of their 'Eureka' collection. In a world
full of CG and 3D movies, this still stands head and shoulders above
the rest as a great piece of cinema and history. In high def on a large
screen TV it is phenomenal, with deep contrast you make out all the
character and set details as never before. It bothers me to think this
movie was nearly wiped out of existence when the estate of Bram Stoker
won their case to have all copies of the film destroyed based on
copyright infringement. Thank the maker they never got all of the
copies.......

A Pure Vampire Horror Film

This is pure (true) vampire film. Deeply Gothic sets and costuming, a
wickedly evil vampire and a more than scary visual atmosphere in this
black and white silent horror movie classic.

What I am not crazy about is the film's score (the music we hear)- most
of it is not very Gothic nor suspenseful or mysterious sounding enough
for me. It's too "cutesy" sounding for my taste - and that ruins the
atmosphere that is created within an otherwise good movie.

All in all this is a pretty good movie to watch and Max Schreck is one
of the creepiest vampires to ever graze the screen. It is worth
watching if you like your vampires extremely scary.

8/10

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The scariest film of all-time for Max Schreck alone.

My choice for the scariest horror film ever made (with considerable
honourable mention to Ridley Scott's Alien) is the quintessential
vampire film  F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens.
Made in 1922, its age is part of the reason why it's so strikingly
horrific. It feels all the more tangible and eerie, especially due to
it being shot on location rather than a soundstage. It doesn't offer
shock horror that we're so used to and desensitized from these days,
given its silence, but instead incites an overwhelming sense of unease.
Is there anything more convincingly ghastly than Max Schreck as Count
Orlok? A substitute here for Bram Stoker's famous Dracula due to rights
issues, but a character that is no less a part of pop culture.

The figure of the vampire seems to be no longer one of horror.
Saturated and romanticized over recent years of PG-13 young adult
films, not to mention an abundance of parodies, Schreck's performance
however still stands tall as an iconic monument in monster movies.
Perhaps it is due to the nature of the character in this context. Klaus
Kinski almost meets Schreck's match in Herzog's 1979 Nosferatu remake
(it takes a lot to claim that Kinski has been outdone in the scary
faces department), and Willem Dafoe's committed portrayal of the actor
in the mediocre Shadow of a Vampire is one of the greatest performances
of all-time in its own right.

While myths perpetuated in the aforementioned film wherein Schreck is
believed to be so convincing as a vampire because he is one are easy to
shake off, he does indeed bring an otherworldly atmosphere. Even when
he does nothing in the frame but stand, the film has a crippling
tension in his enigmatic mystery. His grotesque rat-like makeup with
his pointed ears and bulky nose, his tall rigid intimidating figure,
the claws of his hands and nails, and the hollowness of his face are
all pure nightmare fuel. Even his silhouette sends shivers down my
spine. Schreck uses the tool of his body impeccably to create a sense
of perpetual menace.

Its most haunting scene comes just passed the midway point when the
film's protagonist has escaped from the vampire's castle and Orlok
slowly follows him via a ship transporting coffins. The image of Orlok
springing out of a coffin is chilling. As he kills off the sailors,
which is later blamed on the plague, it suggests a sinister omniscience
and omnipotence about him that previous scenes couldn't implicate, and
it hints at the crushing inevitability of death.

Even so, it isn't as overtly expressionistic as other German films of
the time, especially Murnau's own films, but that restraint only makes
it more generous to the actors and the story. The simplicity of the
iconic frames of looming shadows is enough to withstand 92 years. The
film outside of Schreck is still quite notable, in its storytelling
ideas (it was the first vampire film to suggest that they could be
killed by sunlight) and penetrating themes of fear, narcissism,
sexuality and death. Nosferatu is as thoughtful as it is unsettling. I
was lucky to see it with a live orchestra two years ago and that
experience has stayed with me since. An essential horror film.

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Outstanding adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula

Any critic would elect this movie the masterpiece of expressionist
cinema. Beyond the definitions, any viewer can not help but consider it
a series of pictures at an exhibition, harbingers of horrific
suggestions beyond the capabilities of Friederich and Munch. Max
Schreck will probably be remembered as the Nosferatu closer to the
figure of the vampire that has ever appeared on the screens, so as to
suggest (to some) that Murnau had a real vampire playing the role. It
seems then that Schreck was his real last name, curious twist of fate,
since it means "Terror" in German! Although the names of the characters
from the novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker were all changed, the director
was sued by Stoker's heirs and lost the lawsuit. Returning to the
movie, even if seen in a cut version (missing half an hour) it is a
timeless masterpiece, and I think that instead of staying here to hear
me talk about it you should go and see it!